1. Puerto Rico
2. Bring It On Baby
3. Back To Birmingham
4. Wrong Door
5. Hush Now
6. Barracuda
7. Don't Leave Me Baby
8. Blues From The Booze
9. Big Girl
10. Trapped In The Web Of Love
11. All Or Nothing
12. Blow Her Hot
13. Just One Drink
14. Walkin' With Mr Lee
King Pleasure and the Biscuit Boys
rec. Old Smithy Recording Studio, Kempsey,
Worcester, April and May 2006

It’s not just Puerto Rico
- KP and the BB really taken one on a world
trip with this vivacious, engaging and wholly
enjoyable album. Rhythm is their business
and so is a corporate dynamism and that means
that the feet are seldom still, the fingers
seldom remain unclicked.

They start immediately with
the title track’s solid swinging groove. Lat-Am
percussion hurries us on, and the Gitane and
whisky soaked vocals of KP himself invite
us along for the good time ride. Bring
It On Baby goes with laid back Big Easy
lope; hints of Longhair and shuffle beat here
and of that long suffering sea port. Next
up we go Back to Birmingham. In the
context you might think Alabama but this sounds
like England’s second city in its infatuation
with the Skatalites rhythm and sax front line.
Vocally KP comes on like Jimmy Witherspoon
on speed – a lot of speed. Guitarist Bullmoose
K Shirley stretches out and the saxes honk.

There’s a smoother groove
for Wrong Door and some Louis Jordan
for the next track, Hush Now. KP’s
own composition Blues From The Booze
– over half the songs are in fact his – indulges
some House of the Rising Sun Hammond
organ; evocative. Solid boogie piano from
Mighty Matt Foundling injects Trapped In
The Web Of Love with pulsating venom.
And there’s more than a mere touch of raunch
in Blow Her Hot. One of the band’s
main influences, the 1930s Lucky Millinder
band, haunts the intro to Just One Drink
and another – though no one seems to mention
this - is King Curtis, whose metal-melting
soul stands guard over Walkin' With Mr
Lee. There’s even an unannounced fifty-second
envoi track.

These swinging fellers cover
the ground. They’re not just some Jump and
Jordan combo, knocking out the same old same
old. They swing, they wail, they boogie and
much more. They give you a good time and they
have one themselves. Great stuff.